2 BE OR NAUGHT 2 BE
by The Pragmatic Pragmatist Man
Summary: The Pragmatic Pragmatist' s 1st fanfic! Flames are welcome. Special thanks to Lucy The Hedgehog and wickedflame49 for helping me. Rated M for hidden meanings that are rated M.
1. Chapter 1

**Got a problem?**

**Just pick the phone. It solves them all-and the same way!**

**2**

**B**

**R**

**O**

**2**

**B**

Everything was swell.

There was prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars. All diseases were conquered. So was old age.

Death, barring accidents, was adventure for volunteers.

The population of the United States was stabilized at 40,000,000 souls.

One bright morning in the Chicago Hospital, a hedgehog named Sonic, waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only hedgehog waiting. Not many were born a day anymore.

Sonic was 56, a mere strolling in a population whose average age is 129.

X-Rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The children would be his 1st.

Young Sonic was hunched in his chair, his head in his hands. He was so rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air, too. Chairs and ashtrays had been moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with spattered dropcloths.

The room was being redecorated. It was being redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered to die.

A sardonic old man, about 200, sat on a stepladder, painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly, his age would have been guessed at 35 or so. Aging had touched him that much before the cure for aging was found.

The mural he was working on depicted a very neat garden. Men and women in white, doctors and nurses, turned the soil, planted seedlings, sprayed bugs, spread fertilizer.

Man and women in purple uniforms pulled up weeds, cut down plants that were old and sickly, raked leaves, carried rubbish to trash-burners. Never, never, never-not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan- had a garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use.

A hospital orderly came down the corridor, singing under his breath a popular song:

Backup Singers: Social crisis!

Roger Daltry: Getting burnt by the sun...

BS: This is true!

RD: This ain't no social crisis! Just a another tricky day for you!

The orderly looked at the mural and the muralist, "Looks so real," he said, "I can practically imagine I'm standing in the middle of it."

"What makes you think you're not in it?" said the painter. He gave a satiric smile. "It's called 'The Happy Garden of Life', you know."

"That's good of Dr. Robotnik."


	2. Chapter 3

He was referring to one of the male figures in white, whose head was a portrait of Dr. Ivo Robotnik, the hospital's chief obstetrician. Robotnik was a blindingly handsome man.

"Lot of faces still to fill in," said the orderly. He meant that the faces of many of the figures in the mural were still blank. All blanks were to be filled with portraits of important people on either the hospital staff of the Federal Bureau of Termination.

"Must be nice to be able to paint pictures that look like something," said the orderly. The painter's face curdled with scorn. "You think I'm proud of this daub?" he said. "You think this is my idea of what Life really looks like?"

"What's your idea of what Life looks like?" said the orderly.

The painter gestured at a foul dropcloth. "There's a good picture of it," he said. "Frame that, and you'll have a picture a damm more honest than this one."

"You're a gloomy old man, aren't you? said the orderly.

"Is that a crime?" spat the painter.

The orderly shugged. "If you don't it here, Grandpa-" he said, and finished the thought with the trick telephone number that people call when didn't want to live any more were supposed to call. The 0 was pronounced "naught."

The number was "2BR02B."

It was the number of an institution whose fanciful sobriquets included: "Automat," "Birdland," "Good bye, Mother," and "Why Worry?"

"To be or not to be" was the telephone number of the municipal gas chambers of the Federal Bureau of Termination.

The painter thumbed his nose at the orderly. "When I decide to go," he said, "it won't be at Birdland."

"A do-it-yourselfer, eh?" said the orderly. "Messy business Grandpa. Why don't you have a little consideration for the people who have to clean up after you?"

"They can all go to Hell ," the painter said. "the world could do with a good deal of more mess if you ask me."

The orderly laughed and moved on.

Sonic mumbled something without moving his head. And then fell silent again.

A coarse, formidable hedgehog strode into the waiting room on spike heels. Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag and overseas cap were all purple, the purple which the painter called " the grapes of wrath."

The medallion on her purple musette bag was the seal of the service division of the Federal Bureau of Termination, a hand pushing a turnstile.

The hedgehog had big breasts. A curious thing about gas-chamber hostesses was that no matter how small their breasts were before they were hired, they (the breasts) became bigger within 5 years. The hedgehog in speaking (Rogue) is now a B cup.

"Is this where I'm supposed to come?" she said to the painter.

A lot would depend on your business," he said. "You aren't about to have a baby, are you?"

"They told me I was supposed to pose for some picture," she said. "The name is Rouge."

She waited.

"And you kill people," he said.

"What?" she said?

"Never mind it," he said.

"That sure is a beautiful picture," she said. "Looks like Heaven or something."

"Or something." said the painter he took a list of names from his sick pocket.

"Rouge, Rouge, Rouge, Rouge,"he said, scanning the list. "Yes-Yes here are you. You're entitled to be immortalized. See any faceless body you'd like me to stick your head on? We've got a few choice ones left."

She studied the mural bleakly. "Gee," she said. "they're all the same to me. I don't know anything about art."

"A body's a body, eh?" he said. "All righty. As a matter of fine art, I recommend this body here." He indicated a faceless figure of a woman who was carrying dried stalks to a trash-burner.

"Gosh-" she said, and blushed and became humble-"that"- that puts me right next to Dr. Robotnik."

"That upsets you?" he said.

"Good gravy, no." she said. "It's-it's just such a honor."

"Ah, you admire him, eh?" he said.

"Who doesn't admire him? she said, worshipping the portrait of . It was the portrait of a tanned, white-haired, omnipotent Zeus, 240 years old. "Who doesn't admire him?" she said again. "He was responsible for setting up the 1st gas chambers in Chicago."

"Nothing would please me more," the painter said. "than to put you next to him."

"I work in a gas chamber..." she said. She was demure about what she did. What she did was people comfortable while she killed them.

And, while Rouge was posing for her portrait, into the waiting room bounded Dr. Robotnik himself. He was 7 feet tall, and he boomed with importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living.

"Well Miss Rouge!" he said "What are you doing here?"

"We're going to be in the same picture together." she said shyly.

"Let me tell you," he said, "I am honored to be in it with you."

He saluted her and moved toward the door for the Labor and Delivery room. "Guess what was just born," he said.

"I can't." she said.

"Triplets!" he said.

"Triplets!" she exclaimed.

The law said that no newborn could live unless the parents of the child could volunteer to die. Triplets therefore needed 3 volunteers.

Sonic came up with 1. Tails the hedgehog. Amy had no friends or relatives nearby.

"What's the name?" Rouge asked.

"Sonic," said the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and frowzy. "Sonic Tomas Hedge is the name of the happy father to be." He raised his hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a coarsely wretched chuckle. "Present." he said.

"You don't sound very happy," said Dr. Robotnik.

"What man in my situation wouldn't be happy?" said Sonic. "All I have to do is to pick out 1 of my triplets is going to live, that life for the life of a dear fox friend who die prematurely in the Automat, and a hour later came back with a receipt."

"But I have a better solution."

"What would be that?" said Dr. Robotnik. He was still smiling, unaware of the impending action Sonic will do.

"1,2,3." said Sonic as Robotnik's smile faded sharply.

Sonic pulls out a revolver, shoots Dr. Ivo Robotnik, Rouge, and then himself in the forehead.

The painter reflects on the dreary portrait. No one heard the shots appearently since no one came.

He complements suicide with the gun but has no nerve.

He goes to the nearest telephone booth and dials "2BR02B"

He puts in a appointment for 5:30.

A automated voice says "America thanks you, the world thanks, but more importantly, the future generations of our people thank you..."

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